This plaque was included on the Pioneer 10 & 11 unmanned spacecraft, the first man-made objects to leave our solar system. It’s supposed to show the figures of a man and a woman along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.

I guess the first thing we want other alien species to know about us is that we walk around naked behind large shields to protect us from poorly drawn stars. Awesome.

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15 Responses to The Pioneer Plaque

The ‘shield’ is a picture of the actual spacecraft viewed from the side; the ‘poorly drawn star’ is a map of earth relative to several major pulsars. Each line is the distance to each one.

If you couldn’t tell, the bottom drawing is a schematic of all the planets around the sun–that the spacecraft is seen flying away from the third one from the inside is the pertinent piece of information.

Finally, they’re naked because no one knows during which epoch the aliens (if they do) will find the spacecraft, so there’s no way to put clothing on them to match that (presumably far into the future) era.

Just what we need, a whole bunch of aliens jerkin it to poorly drawn outlines of humans, who knows maybe all life evolves into the humanoid form.

If this IS true, then Invariably it will fall into the backyard of some kids house. And much like a child perusing his first national geographic, he will touch himself, repeatedly.

Eventually their version of Disney will produce a movie about the crazy nude aliens from afar (complete with music from Randy Newman – no not their version – they’ll outsource one of the “nude” aliens for realism), and generations of children will be raised and fear us – until the apocalypse comes and all Christians leave, and everyone else is left, then they’ll attack.

Risky business there. Say an alien did find it? Well, interpreting images is difficult. I’m volunteering at an ESL place while I’m in uni, and there’s a certain teacher that teaches people who know no English whatsoever, mostly refugees. Some of these people, from the Sahara mainly, have no ability to see 2D images. All they see is randomness which, unless told, they don’t know was created by any person – this includes drawings and photographs alike. Visually interpreting pictures is a learnt skill, but we don’t realize it because most of us learn from such a very young age.

Of course, these people eventually pick it up, but then again, they’re still born with the same eyes and brains as any healthy human being. The real problem we run into is, presumably aliens would have evolved in a completely different environment, and would share nothing with us genetically. They’d have different nervous systems (if they had anything equivalent to our kind of brain at all, who knows?) and completely different senses – even if they could see, who knows what spectrum, or how they interpret it.

If intelligent aliens ever did find that probe, and noticed that drawing, we’d be lucky if it even occurred to them that it had meaning. That is, if there are even aliens hanging out really really really close to our solar system and not actually coming here (oh, there’s a star with planets right next to us?!?! I never noticed), because that probe would take fucking ages to get anywhere anyway.

The likelihood of our species meeting another humanoid species even at all similar to ours is highly unlikely. I’m talking like, one in a googol.

Our species has adapted itself to what we have. Considering we are the currently only planet known to contain active life anywhere in the universe and the special events that make our planet life-sustaining, any other planet is bound to be different, and thus have different lifeforms.

There are basic things that a create evolved enough to build spacecrafts needs.

a) Large enough and strong enough to work with tools and move heavy objects (no 1′ tall people), yet small enough not to desolate the planets food supplies (no 50′ people).
b) A brain large enough and complex enough for sophisticated thought.
c) Opposable thumbs and dexterous fingers. You cant build spacecraft without them!
d) Eyes and ears. You have to be able to see what you are doing, and hear for communication. Other forms of communication are too limited on a large scale.

I am sure there are other things, those are just some off the top of my head. No, aliens would not have to look just like us, but there are a lot of required features that any space-traveling species would have to have so there will at least be similarities.

I belive that most advanced alien lifeform that we could discover will be an insectoid form.
Insect have higher evolutional potential, being more damaged resistant, can work as collective mind, and capable of adapt to new living spaces.

The probability of intelligent life is anywhere else in the universe is damn near zero. Go read Rare Earth. I saw Donald Brownlee, in a panel discussion at an ASAP conference a few years ago, debate three SETI researchers (including Jill Tartar, the woman “Contact” is based on) and Dr. Brownlee won the debate hands-down. There is basically no scientific reason to believe there is intelligent life out there and a lot of evidence that its unlikely.